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Gračanica Monastery

Gračanica Monastery

Photo: Sasa Micic · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Location
Gračanica, Kosovo
Client / Owner
Stefan Milutin
Year
Completed 1321
Access
Public
Typology
Spiritual

King Stefan Milutin founded the monastery, built in 1321 to replace an older 13th-century church on the site. The article names no architect and calls the style Serbo-Byzantine, the culmination of medieval Serbian building in that tradition. The plan is a double inscribed cross. A central dome on four free-standing pillars rises above four smaller domes, and the three apses are three-sided.

The nave frescoes date to 1321 and 1322. A narthex and tower were added a few decades later to protect the west facade frescoes, and an exonarthex with double arcades followed at the end of the 14th century. Ottoman attacks burned the tower in the years 1379 to 1383, and the narthex was reconstructed in 1383. Frescoes of 1570 mark a restoration under Patriarch Makarije Sokolović.

UNESCO listed it in 2006 as part of Medieval Monuments in Kosovo, and the site is on the List in Danger.

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